by Roz Morris, Managing Director, TV News London Ltd
It’s hard to believe that ‘David Hockney resigns’ was an actual headline carried by the BBC on the day the celebrated artist’s death was announced. This was a huge mistake prompting much criticism on social media linking it to this month’s latest round of ongoing BBC cuts to journalism jobs and news programmes including BBC Radio 4 The World Tonight.
There’s a lot of debate online about how this mistake could ever have happened.
Hockney was so famous that he even had tributes from the King and Queen. In a personal message, King Charles said he and the Queen were “greatly saddened” to learn of the death of “a giant of the world of art and painting, a Yorkshireman through and through, and a dear friend and inspiration to so many”.
But somehow, someone, or more than one person, working for BBC News had apparently never heard of him and apparently assumed he was yet another Government minister resigning whom they had also never heard of.
The caption only appeared briefly on screen, and the correct wording was later used. The BBC apologised for the mistake which led to much ridicule online. For example, asking what exactly Hockney was resigning from. Life? Meanwhile the BBC plans to cut £500 million from its budget and continues to cut journalists, including many experienced journalists.
In an email to staff earlier this month, the interim CEO of BBC News, Jonathan Munro, outlined the latest round of proposed cuts, including ending Radio 4’s The World Tonight, and reducing the number of permanent presenters on BBC Radio 4 Today from five to four fromSeptember, with a single anchor instead of two on Saturdays.
BBC One’s Breakfast will no longer be shown on Sunday morning from September and the production teams making Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg and Newsnight will merge. Running the BBC News website’s InDepth section with a smaller team is also proposed.
Several other Radio 4 programmes will end during 2027. These include Money Box Live, the Midnight News, AntiSocial, The Law Show and Crossing Continents. On BBC World Service, The Inquiry, The Conversation and The Fifth Floor will also end.
The National Union of Journalists said the proposed cuts would be “devastating for audiences and communities everywhere”. John Sailing, the NUJ’s national organiser for the broadcasting sector, said: “Previous cuts have meant that our members are already being asked to do more with less, and are at serious risk of burnout.”
The human cost as well as the journalistic impact of these cutbacks was revealed in a post on LinkedIn by freelance correspondent Guy de Launey.
He posted this on the day after the cuts were announced:
‘Thank you to everyone who has sent messages of support over the past day. I have worked for the BBC for 32 years – 22 of those as a foreign correspondent on a rolling annual freelance agreement.
Yesterday I and four of my colleagues received this email:
“Like all of BBC News more widely, we are facing large savings targets. Therefore, we have decided that we will not be renewing your engagement letter with us when it expires on July 31st this year. World News Content will stop using you.”
There were no words of thanks or appreciation. No apology. No suggestions on exactly how one should fill the sudden enormous gap in income with 6 weeks’ notice.
As others have noted, it does seem odd that if BBC News wants to save money that it should be cutting the very people who can file from anywhere, in any format, at the drop of a hat. With expert knowledge, professionalism and timeliness.’ You can read more here.
The BBC has been criticised for numerous editorial mistakes since it began broadcasting 24 hour news in 1997. These include mixing up and miscaptioning several black people including Viola Davis and Beyonce, Labour MP’s Marsha de Cordova and Dawn Butler, as well as using footage of basketball player LeBron James in its coverage of the death of retired NBA star Kobe Bryant and putting up an image of footballer Raheem Sterling during a report about a footballer arrested on suspicion of rape, despite Sterling having no connection to the story.
In the past 10 years It has paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds in damages in court cases about inaccurate reporting. These include former Northern Ireland politician Gerry Adams, former royal nanny Tiggy Legge Bourke, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and others.
There have also been numerous complaints about automatic subtitling making a lot of mistakes, and a big fuss when BBC Breakfast captioned a row about a Tory donor using the word ‘doner’ as in kebabs.
More seriously on the subject of editorial standards, the BBC is still trying to have Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against it dismissed. The case hinges on what the BBC has called ‘an error of judgement’ when a 2024 Panorama documentary called ‘Trump: A Second Chance?’ edited together two separate clips of a Trump speech, making it appear he had explicitly encouraged the Capitol Hill riot of January 2021. This issue led to the resignations of the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and its head of news, Deborah Turness earlier this year.
In the past 10 years the BBC has cut several hundred posts from its news services on radio and TV. In 2020 BBC news division cut 520 posts. These included journalists, producers, editors and technical staff. In 2025 BBC World Service announced cuts to 130 jobs in order to save £6 million a year.
Interim CEO of BBC News Jonathan Munro has told BBC staff that said the latest proposed cuts will mean 200 job losses in the BBC News division resulting in savings of £25 million. More journalism job cuts are expected as the BBC has described this announcement as ‘the first stage’ in its plan to save £500m across the corporation over the next two years.
Ten years ago, we laughed when Guy Goma became known as ‘The Wrong Guy’ after he was interviewed on the BBC News Channel as tech expert Guy Kewney. Guy Goma was waiting in reception for an interview for an admin job when he was mistakenly whisked into the studio.
Many people aren’t laughing now about the BBC’s cuts in journalistic experience and worry that the ‘David Hockney resigns’ blunder is only the first of more displays of ignorance replacing the knowledge and authority we expect.
Do you or your colleagues want to know how to handle your media interviews professionally? Could your business survive reputational damage caused by poor media handling? Contact me on info@tvnewslondon.co.uk and together we can ensure that you do your best and not your amateur worst in your media interviews.
